Once upon a time there was an audio format called Liquid Audio.
The company that developed it, also called Liquid Audio, offered a free player, and allowed you to download free tracks, or you could purchase them. They were like a buck, buck fifty per song, the quality was great, file sizes weren't too bad, and they had players for Windows and Mac.
There is no love for Linux. Not a bit.
But, things change, and now Liquid sells tracks in Windows Media format instead.
For those of you -- sorry, me -- who purchased tracks in Liquid Audio format, they'll still work, if you gots your Passport (re-acquired, after I remembered what my fucking password was). . . and a copy of Liquid Player.
It's no longer available on their web site. There's an End of Life statement, which is all well and good, but I'd hoped they'd say, "We don't support this shit, but you wanna download it, knock yourself out."
No suck luck.
Luckily, a broken link at least gave me a file name, EnPromolmp6.1.0.17a.exe. So, did a Google on that and found a few places with the thing sitting around collecting dust.
Am downloading it now. And yes, will run a virus scan on it first to make sure they're not just fucking with the gullible and desperate.
I have learned my lesson about proprietary file formats. From now on, I'm sticking with EMusic and mp3s.
Or Ogg. Seeing as some tracks I'd thought I ripped in mp3 format are actually Ogg-Vorbis thingees, and now I can't play them either. Maybe if I change the extension?
Guess I lied about stopping with the early-morning coffee-fueled rambling earlier.
Update: Right, one reason for the rambling is, on a whim I, um, borrowed the USB mouse and keyboard from my sister's iMac -- ain't a big fan of touchpads myself -- and plugged 'em into the Gateway laptop. Had to get a few HID device files off the Windows 98 install cd, but other than that, all things working well.
Except the open apple key (their keyboards don't have the closed apple key anymore, do they?) acts as a Windows key, bringing up the Start menu, which is mildly confusing. control (All lower case? Why?) and alt/option work as they ought, but aren't where I think they ought, so I'm doing Silly Things when I try to copy and paste.
Yes, it's more TMI, but it's geek TMI instead of the other kind. Deal.
And yes, I noticed that the referrer script -- or database for same, at least -- fall down go boom again. Well, it gives everyone a chance to try to top Google, This Modern World and Atrios. . .
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